Greenpeace has estimated that the incidence of cancer in these working conditions could be as high as 25 per cent, or that every fourth worker in Alang could suffer from cancer.

The report which was released in the city this week, says that over 40,000 workers at these scrapping yards are exposed daily to highly toxic chemicals, free asbestos fibres, vapours and dusts which contain heavy metals, arsenic, TBT, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and possibly dioxins.

The team, comprising Greenpeace staffers Nityanand Jayaraman, Judit Kanthak and Andreas Bernstoff, collected environmental and material samples in the two places in early October and analysed the samples in a Hamburg laboratory.

The analysis revealed dramatic to substantial workplace contaminationby various heavy metals through ship paints. The workplace and environmental contamination by organotin compounds (tibtyl tin, TBT) from antifouling paints on ship hulls, was similarly severe.Asbestos, after being stripped from ships without any kind of safeguards, was omnipresent in working areas, on shop counters and tipped along farming tracks.

Besides frequent injuries and deaths among the workers due to explosions and fire, the labourers are constantly poisoned by these toxins.

The 40,000 labourers at Alang were exposed to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins from the incessant burning of non-recoverable wastes on the beach.

The report notes that most of the workers in Alang are young, some of them just 17 years old.

What activists are asking for is to scrap the ships with adequate safeguards. ``Ships can be scrapped safely, it may increase costs, but it can still be a highly profitable industry,'' said Vivek Monteiro of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions.

In a letter to theEnvironment Minister Suresh Prabhu earlier this month, representatives of several trade unions have urged the Government to ensure that ship owners take steps to decontaminate their ships before it leaves for India, improve work conditions at the scrapyards and write to the International Maritime Organisation directing ship owners to decontaminate their ships before export to India.

Greenpeace is particularly concerned that ships built in the 1970s with hazardous materials like asbestos dust, Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and lead compounds, are now landing up in scrapyards all over Asia. ``Ships built after 1985 are relatively clean, as they don't contain PCBs and had begun moving away from heavy metal paints,'' says Greenpeace activist Nityanand Jayaraman.